The classrooms look huge...but only because there is no clutter of "stuff and the minimalist furniture. "All we have to do is focus on the kids and not ourselves." That was principal Sonya Wrisley's response as I gawked at the seemingly vast amount of space that her students have in the newly-opened Design [...]
In building a design challenge for a group of public schools within the Poway Unified School District, we have defined a short list of essential guiding questions: How might we re-structure foundational elements of the traditional school model (time, space, leadership, allocation of people and budget) to increase effective differentiation of learning that will meet [...]
I am almost done reading the powerful biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaccson. It is certainly a must read for all of us who have grown up with, or are the recipients of, the generation of technology/design geniuses who changed the world forever. While Jobs was anything but a role model of empathy or perhaps [...]
On this Labor Day, remember that schools are founded in the people who work there. A 2013 Gallup Survey found that: Seven in 10 American workers are “not engaged” or are “actively disengaged” in their jobs, are “emotionally disconnected” from their workplaces, and are “less likely to be productive,” according to Gallup’s recently released study, [...]
I am so honored and lucky to have been involved in the creation of Design 39 Campus, the new K-8 school in Poway Unified School District. Leading education reporter Katrina Schwartz does a better job than I have in the past of painting a picture of D39C, so check out her article in MindShift and [...]
Success, even in little steps, sure is great! The 6th grade teaching team at Ortiz MS in Santa Fe, N.M. should be absolutely BEAMING about how they transformed the first week of middle school, one of the toughest times in a student's life, into one of the best. And I really want you to follow [...]
Is your school community aligned behind a well-defined group of forward-leaning, system-wide learning initiatives? Are you busting or re-enforcing silos with your strategic thinking? Are you using the most recent research in neuroscience to help craft learning routines and differentiate learning opportunities for each child? I had a full day to work with the faculty, staff [...]
Why don't we use faculty meetings for deep and collaborative thinking? Why do trustees and faculty work on parallel tracks that almost never cross? Does our school have a portfolio of value-generating innovative projects in the pipeline that will mature over the next 1-3 years? These are some of the expansive questions we asked and [...]
Dear Secretary Duncan, You can't have it both ways: if the emphasis on testing is "sucking the oxygen" out of schools, delaying teacher assessments based on student testing for a year is not a solution. That is the same kind of push-it-down-the-road Band-Aid for which Washington DC has such a deserved, and unfortunate reputation. Over-emphasis [...]
Where is the student voice in our educator Twitter chats? Why are PLC's teacher-centric? How might we break the silo boundary between teacher professional growth and student learning? I get at least one good idea nearly every time I visit a Twitter chat. This morning I grabbed a seat at the #satchatwc (hosted today by education [...]